The Olympic Stadium of Ebimpé in Abidjan, the 60,000-seat home venue of Les Éléphants, the Ivory Coast national football team, has been equipped with a new venue-wide sound reinforcement system driven by more than 60 Quattrocanali 4804 amplifiers from Powersoft.
The need for a new sound system so soon after the Olympic Stadium’s opening in 2020 came after its original PA system – installed by the original contractor, China’s Beijing Construction Engineering Group (BCEG) – was damaged by adverse weather conditions. The new system was designed by Ricardo Castro, CEO of Portuguese AV consultancy RCOe, on behalf of local integrator Protech Distribution.
In addition to the 61 Quattrocanali 4804 amplifiers – of which he opted for the DSP+D model, with Dante audio-over-IP networking – Castro specified 14 Powersoft Duecanali 6404 DSP+D amplifiers to lend additional power for the 104-loudspeaker system, which is divided into 28 clusters to maximize coverage across the stadium. A pair of Quattrocanali units are bi-amped to each Community R2-66MAX loudspeaker cluster, while the Duecanali models are used to power the Community IS8-215 subs.
All amplifiers, patchboxes and network switches are divided into four rack rooms located at the four corners of the stadium to minimize the length of the cable connection to the loudspeakers. A Biamp TesiraFORTÉ DAN DSP is used as a Dante converter for the primary audio source to the amplifiers, as well as for a four-zone paging system for security and emergency announcements.
Castro explains that while he is generally manufacturer-agnostic, he knew when first approached by Inza Bamba, Protech’s managing director, with whom he has a long working relationship, that Powersoft amplifiers and Community loudspeakers from Biamp would be a good fit for the new-look Ebimpé Stadium – and that’s before he found that BCEG had used some Powersoft racks for the previous installation. This discovery was important from a budgetary point of view: having already paid out for one sound system, the stadium’s managing committee was looking for a cost-effective approach for its replacement.
Additionally, “time was very tight, which I think was the biggest challenge,” continues Castro. “I was given six months for everything.” The installation was completed on time in May, despite additional difficulties recruiting suppliers and dealing with a shortage of parts and equipment. On that front, “Inza managed things very well,” he adds.
Castro initially equipped a quarter of the venue – one of four zones – with the new Powersoft–Community/Biamp system as a proof of concept. “I said, ‘Let’s see how it works,’” he recalls. “And on one of the days we were there, stadium staff, consultants and clients all came along and heard the system for themselves, and they couldn’t believe the difference – in sound quality, volume and intelligibility – compared to the previous system. It sounds incredible.”
